So when Farrar saw an opportunity to capitalize on an innovation developed by two nurses at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Salt Lake City, she grabbed it.

The technology, a device that promises to block pathogens from entering patients through intravenous catheters, led Farrar to start Catheter Connections.

Farrar, a Park City lawyer who represents medical device and pharmaceutical companies, co-founded Catheter Connections this year with Robert Hitchcock, a University of Utah bioengineering professor with a 24-year track record of bringing new medical instruments to the marketplace.

Catheter Connections is one of 24 companies launched in the past year from technologies developed or donated to Utah's biggest public university.

The company is tapping university resources available to faculty and staff inventors who start businesses, which can range from scientific advice and graphic design to business introductions and financial support.

In return, the U. receives an equity stake and royalties from any sales that result as the startup companies gain a toehold in their respective industries. In some cases, royalties can run in the millions of dollars. Anesta Corp., which developed patented products to manage cancer pain, paid over $100 million in royalties to the U. Anesta was sold to West Chester, Pa.-based, drug maker Cephalon Inc. in 2000.

"The assistance from the university I can't begin to underestimate. It helped us with a business plan. It helped us with a marketing plan. It introduced me to a biofilm expert [knowledgeable in microbes that get inside catheters]," Farrar said.

"It's one thing to start a company. It's another thing having somebody to help you along the way."

The two dozen U.-linked businesses that were started between July 1, 2006, and June 30 put a face to what the state's flagship institution of higher education has contended for years - that the 158-year-old school is an economic engine that produces tax revenue and high-wage jobs that keep the rest of the state humming.

More than 160 companies and 6,000 jobs have been developed from U. technology since the university opened a technology commercialization office in 1983.

While not all survived, those that did include some of Utah's biggest technology names: drug developer Myriad Genetics; ARUP Laboratories, a U.-owned clinical and anatomic pathology reference lab with 2,300 employees; and Idaho Technology, a Salt Lake-based pathogen identification and DNA-analysis firm.

The university's record of transferring its research into private-sector businesses is almost unmatched.

In February, the Association of University Technology Managers said the U. was second-best in the nation at starting technology companies based on its research. Only the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was more productive.

"We probably have one of the higher per-capita [number of] entrepreneurs in our faculty," said Glenn Prestwich, professor of medical chemistry and special assistant to university President Michael Young for faculty entrepreneurship.

"It's a very supportive environment for getting technology out of the lab and into the technology sector. That's why we are No. 2, because we have so many entrepreneurial faculty," Prestwich said.

Prestwich is in a position to know. Part of his job is to ferret out "latent" entrepreneurs among the university faculty and staff. Prestwich has also helped to start four U.-based biotechnology companies in the past decade, including GlycoMyra Pharmaceutical, which was incorporated last week. The company is developing a line of treatments for skin ailments such as rosacea and psoriasis.

"The company was founded by myself and Tom Kennedy, a practicing pulmonologist" at the university, Prestwich said.

"Tom and I were gotten together by the Technology Commercialization Office. This is an example of TCO getting two guys together and saying, "Hey guys, we want you to invent something together.' "

That conversation occurred in January. Two weeks later, Prestwich and Kennedy had developed a promising substance that led them to establish GlycoMyra.

The U.'s technology commercialization achievements are extraordinary, said Brad Bertoch, president of the Wayne Brown Institute, which helps start-ps market themselves to venture capital companies.

"If you look at companies such as Myriad Genetics or NPS Pharmaceuticals [which merged with New Jersey-based Enzon Pharmaceuticals in 2003] or any other of the number of firms that have come out of the university, they employ hundreds and thousands of people and have raised hundreds of millions of dollars in capital, and have had a major impact on the economy," Bertoch said.

Bertoch said technology is the largest industrial sector in Utah.

Without the U.'s technology transfer efforts and the entrepreneurs who were educated at the school, government and tourism would be the biggest sectors of the state's economy, the state's average income might be 30 percent lower and unemployment could be 50 percent higher, he said.

pbeebe@sltrib.com